The Great Get-Together, or "We Go To Falcon Heights Instead Of Getting A Passport"

The orgy is over, debris swept and trucked to the landfill not more than 5 miles away. The stands like fallen oaks, chopped to the ground and hauled away in Chevy products. The smell reducing from the lofty animal stench to the stink of modern life. Giant contraptions now transformed into stacks of metal, destined for god knows where. The land re-propriated, the sky higher and a deeper shade.

And to think, only a week ago you could've been eating Spam Curds on this very spot.

Nothing manifests itself more succinctly, no group of people come together in a more typical statement of their shared consciousness - the world over - than Minnesotans at The Fair. It is within this jungle of layered ideas, this labyrinth of confused morals, where the communal heart beats, where the outlook for our entire region radiates. If you see nothing else of this state, if you pre-suppose on nearly every manner of lifestyle, you honestly need nothing more than a 45 minute walk through this spectacle held every labor day weekend. Let no one call it a circus or a carnival. It is, quite simply, every single moment of midwestern life personified on a swatch of land large enough to build a football AND a baseball stadium.

Contradictions and livestock, that's pretty much the main theme here. The contradiction of life lived versus life wanted, and the utter swell of disgusting humanity pushing and herding themselves through various activities deemed fun by those with Money, who almost certainly live on a coast. The ideal self propped up in the form of health fairs and food education classes, standing starkly against the naked reality - the inability to steer away from the Cheese Curds. There is a mirror of information here, an attitude not of self but of reflection of self. Those in attendance are making their one venture into "the city", braving all of the usual dangers that come with being outside for more than an hour at a time, coming in contact with people who don't wear belts, keeping sure the wife is hydrated, the kids are placated, with the watchful eye always looking for the Dark Lurkers. Fanny packs optional, but not really. The reality of it is that The Fair is held on an old farm-field in Falcon Heights, a few miles down the road from the U of M feedlot aka St. Paul Campus. Nearby you can dine at Dino's or KFC, and the unknown maelstrom of Snelling Avenue cuts just to the west.

Contradictions and livestock.

We can look into that barn, but why specify it? It's everywhere, that life of complacency and subjectivity, that meager existence of family and stunted dreams. Like Rivers says, givin up and growin old and hopin there's a god. Cattle through the turnstiles, hogs with credit cards, fowl turned loose and clucking in line to the grandstand. The stink and the depravity lingering, the heat irrepressible. Lightning wouldn't zap away this rot. Floods must come by the thousands.

Still though, there is a shared moment in all of this, the sort of jolt that connects both time and space, and transcends preconceived notions. Ours comes during a wine tasting, coincidentally. The taste of The Grape hits just that right note, and the conversation turns to travels, to escape, to experience. One glance around the room confirms that we are here with a bunch of 30-something women named Stacy or Megan and their woefully stupid husbands, and we identify ourselves as outsiders, Dylan-esque, born without a home, with no direction there-to. Drifters, aimless, knowing not where they want to go but knowing definitely where they DON'T want to go, and that's right here. It's not all bad, any awakening ends up in the positive column. So if you're conscious of it, if you stand outside the bubble, then hell, yes, have another Leine's. It's not ironic and it's not unintentional. It's good goddamned beer. Swim with the pigs, but never walk in that pen without a map.

If you count yourself as an optimist - and why wouldn't you be? - you have to mine each situation for positivity. And in the midst of the swarming masses of Dumbness, to simply remind oneself of their own destiny is as refreshing as a fresh-squeezed lemonade.

High in sugar. But there's a fruit on the cup, so it's ok.